The circulation of the empty signifier in Edgar Allan Poe's 'The purloined letter' : Poe, Bonaparte, Lacan, Derrida, and the relation of analysis

Abstract

This dissertation is an analysis of Poe's The Purloined Letter, a story that would seem to script its own analysis in the movement of the letter from which the story takes its name. This complicates the relation of analysis being enacted on that which already partakes of analysis. The effect has been that the letter would appear to exert a type of logic over the text and those who would look to analyse the text. This being the case, this paper looks to situate the reading programmes of Marie Bonaparte, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida in relation to each other and to the text. This relation is unsteady and through an examination of the different reading strategies employed, this paper explores the complications that analysis of analysis presents. The paper begins identifying Poe within the classical scholarly tradition that reads the man from his writings and his writings from his life. This reliance on biographism finds its culmination of Bonaparte's reading strategy of applied psychoanalysis. The failure of this programme is shown in the self-complicating nature of the text which Lacan finds germane to both illustrate and enact his brand of psychoanalysis. In turn, this paper looks to Derrida's engagement with Lacan, Bonaparte, and the text as well as the relation between them. It concludes that the relation of analysis to analysis is one of undecidability.